Deutsche Welle: Lack of goods in the north, orchestrated crisis

“This is a catastrophe”, says a woman in northern Mitrovica.

Store shelves already lack some milk products, bread disappear faster, and stores need to be visited for diapers, flour, and other foods.

There's always something that people suffer about, someone has to do something”, she adds.

As Deutsche Welle reports in the Serbian language, a warning of lack of supplies in Serb areas north of Kosovo this time came from Pristina.

Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj has recently warned the public that a group of Serbian businessmen will make an effort to present a “false humanitarian crisis”, after which journalists from Pristina went to Mitrovica confirming Haradinaj's statement about a false crisis.

Although it is still too much to talk about “humanitarian crisis”, Kosovo's northern residents will agree that the crisis already exists.

Boycott “solidizer”

Traders from northern Kosovo, ten days ago, following the arrest of dozens of people suspected of smuggling, banned the use of alternative routes for the introduction of goods from Serbia. On these alternative roads, the Serb community for years illegally supplies drugs and textbooks, which here is considered “smuggling justified”.

“Malts came exactly as it should be, we had to do this”, a businessman relates, answering the question of why there was no shortage of goods so far.

In recent months, according to media reports, several trucks with goods have been confiscated. The smuggling flourished after the Kosovo government's decision to impose the tax on goods imported from Serbia and BiH last November.

Pregorics with dairy products are rarely filled, and there are more and more empty crates and stalls in the markets.

Rafts and Empty safes in Mitrovica

Responding to the determined tax, Serbian businessmen decided that replacement for Serbian goods would not be sought south by Ibri, so not to buy goods from Albanian suppliers. What kind of Kosovo products do they produce? Never did there be anything like this here”, said a businessman on the market in northern Mitrovica. He said he has bought from suppliers Albanian trees and vegetables that came from Macedonia and Greece.

While Serbian businessmen in southern Kosovo have adapted, those from the north mainly say they are “solated” in order not to buy Kosovo products. There are also those who say that this is what they are ordered to do, but they do not want to find out if they are pressured to “sidadated”.

The business player will escalate early next week. According to warnings, all shops, drugstores, restaurants and cafes will be closed Monday and Tuesday in municipalities in northern Kosovo.

Serbia's President Aleksandar Vucic denied Haradinaj's statements that he [Wukiqi] has deliberately insisted on the crisis. We'll do what we can and what it is it won't tell you. We will not allow our people to die hungry, although many would love this”, Vuciq said.

The orchestrated crisis?

Miodrag Marinkovic, a political analyst from northern Mitrovica, believes the boycott of Kosovo goods has no economic basis, but is politically motivated, but to some extent is also reasonable. “Kosovo's northern citizens have not been given choice between two or more products, but have been imposed on a market and its” products, Marinkovic told DW.

Citizens feel similarly, or at least that way to tell reporters. Most firmly answer that in the case of chronic shortages, they will not go south of Mitrovica to buy even though they have previously gone to shopping centres on the other side of the bridge.

Some will not do so by challenging, but there are others who have no economic advantage to convert dinars into euros every day. In the north almost the entire circulation takes place in dinars, while south of the Iber River, except for Serb enclaves, the only valid currency is the euro.

However, accustomed to frequent crises, citizens are impressed that even this situation will not last long and that something will be resolved.

Few Serbs to cross bridge, go for supplies south of Mitrovica

Nor does Marinkovovic believe that the time in which the last crisis arose was a coincidence. This is a position before continuing negotiations and reaching a comprehensive agreement on normalising relations. The same background has the main cause of this crisis, the tax imposed on products from Serbia and BiH “.

Serbian analyst, however, believes boycotting Kosovo products is the result of pressure. “If families of people from the north of Kosovo needed milk for children, they would buy it in southern Kosovo. In this they could only prevent organized intimidation, public pressure, or hiding. Such pressure is currently visible”, he concludes.

If local shops remain empty for a long time, the majority of Serbs from the north will go for greater purchases in Rashka or Novi Pazar.